Wow! I’m so impressed! I’ve always been best at color-work like blending and layering. I think I’m likely to go into an abstract, impressionist phase for a while until I feel ready to intentionally craft forms. Anything that’s supposed to look like a real thing right now just frustrates me! But your sketching ideas…

I’m at best a complete amateur painter. I suffer from a perfectionist personality, so I try to remind myself that my goal is to make something that makes me happy. And that’s all! I’m interested in picking up some watercolors and colored pencils with good paper for the next project I start. I think having crisp,…

I take long walks and work out. Limited journaling and painting help.

Best thread evah!

I’m going to be a party-pooper here and say that I don’t think consumer identity has much to do with maturity.

There’s nothing wrong with craving affection and sex! It sounds like he took advantage, and that’s on him, not you.

It’s nice to hear it articulated so clearly.

I don’t buy into the myth of the incompetent Democratic Party. We’ve seen some gains: advancement in LGBT rights and expanded healthcare. Decriminalization of weed, while it can seem like a petty issue, can take away one of the tools used by the police state to persecute various “dissedent” and vulnerable people. I…

No idea, really. If the events of the last few months taught me nothing, it taught me that I am politically inept.

“Always stay gracious / Best revenge is your paper.”

Anyone else get the sense that the Obama administration and Democrats are setting something up? Some larger, invisible machinery might be at work.

So, in this little discourse, you have stated you “hate” these people (and they say SUCH nice things about you), called the women “sentient sex dolls,” invoked a literal logical fallacy as a supposed line of reasoning (“slippery slope”), grossly over-generalized the political platform of feminism (a very pluralistic…

I wonder if all the unproductive in-fighting in this thread might teach us something about what bitter defeatism brings about. I’m hurting, too. But those of us who still care about peace and social justice need to get it together and start organizing and planning for what we’re going to do in the next few years to…

I hate how often women are pitted against each other in public discourse. bell hooks v. Beyonce, Camille Paglia v. Madonna. It’s possible to critique the spectacle without sacrificing care for the person. This does nothing to advance feminism.

It’s like the court of Versailles under the Sun King.

There’s definitely a mean middle-schooler energy that crops up on Jez from time to time.

Good man. We need him back.

The Last Unicorn is not just a movie . . . it’s a really great book! So is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I also think Oorlando by Virginia Woolf is really great, and the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood is spectacular.

You’re probably right. I think the idea has more to do with this desire to hold on the the hope so many people had during the Obama administration. I’ve had the sense that Michelle was forced into a mold to appeal to the public towards the end of the 2008 campaign and has had to play a role ever since.

I think shilljoy was saying he would have struggled on the campaign trail, not been a worse president once elected. I’m pretty sure more people on this site are of the opinion that a ball of belly lint would be a better president and the proposed cabinet would be improved if it were filled with dishware.